File:Industrial history of the United States, from the earliest settlements to the present time- being a complete survey of American industries, embracing agriculture and horticulture; including the (14572725829).jpg

Identifier: industrialhistor00boll (find matches)
Title: Industrial history of the United States, from the earliest settlements to the present time: being a complete survey of American industries, embracing agriculture and horticulture; including the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, wheat; the raising of horses, neat-cattle, etc.; all the important manufactures, shipping and fisheries, railroads, mines and mining, and oil; also a history of the coal-miners and the Molly Maguires; banks, insurance, and commerce; trade-unions, strikes, and eight-hour movement; together with a description of Canadian industries
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Bolles, Albert Sidney, 1846-1939
Subjects: Industries Industries
Publisher: Norwich, Conn. : The Henry Bill pub. Company
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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into grains, eitherby mallets or toothed rollers, glazed by rolling in barrels so as to enable thegrains the better to resist moisture, dried, sifted, and cleaned of dust. The relative proportion of the ingredients causes the powder to burnslowlv or rapidlv. This idea was taken advantage of by Gen. ... r 0 Ignition of Rodman, U.S.A., in 1856. in order to produce a powder suited powder,to lar^e cannon. He conducted a series of experiments with how deter- 0 1 mined. powders, and was the first in the world to produce an explosive suited to modern artillery. His powders were made in two forms. One, called the mammoth, was in irregular grains, from six-tenths to s & > Rodman. nine-tenths ot an inch in diameter: the other, called the u per-forated cake, was in hexagonal or cylindrical grains, perforated with six orten holes. Gen. Rodman gained slow combustion by these varieties of pow-der, and consequently greater initial velocity at the mouth of the gun. with 472 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY
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IOWDER-EXPLOSION. OF THE UNITED STATES. 473 less recoil. The heavy guns used in the war of 1861 were supplied withthe Rodman powder. It is related, that in many cases, when light bat-teries or infantry regiments were deployed in front of the heavy guns, onlower ground, but close to them, the men of the latter were sometimeshit and wounded with kernels of the powder which had not been burned.Rodmans idea was adopted in Europe as soon as it became known. TheEnglish pebble and pellet powders, and the Russian prismatic, are the out-growth of it. The power of gunpowder is enormous. Water expands seventeen hundredtimes in becoming steam ; but gunpowder expands into a greater volume ofgases, and its tension is enormously promoted by the heat gener- Power ofated in combustion. One early experimenter in this country con- gunpowder,fined twenty-eight grains of powder in a cylindrical space which it exactlyfilled: when fired, it burst a piece of iron which would have resisted a strainof four hun

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